Immigrant rights advocates and a Bay Area lawmaker blasted the Obama administration Monday for stripping states of any power over a national fingerprint-sharing program intended to ease deportations of illegal immigrants held in jail.

Advocacy groups in California called the administration's decision to enforce the Secure Communities program on its own, with no state participation, a "shocking display of bad faith" and urged Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris to speak out against it.

Brown - who as attorney general supported the federal program and rejected San Francisco's request to opt out - had no comment Monday. Lynda Gledhill, a spokeswoman for Harris, said her office was "broadly examining the issue of Secure Communities and taking a serious look at the program," but would not elaborate.

The program requires local jails to send federal authorities the fingerprints of everyone they take into custody so they can be checked against immigration records. It began in 2008 with voluntary state participation - California signed up in 2009 - and is scheduled to become mandatory in 2013.

Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which runs Secure Communities, said the goal is to focus deportation efforts on dangerous criminals. But opponents of the program say nearly half of the more than 100,000 placed in deportation proceedings had either a minor criminal record or none at all.

Citing early statements from the Obama administration that suggested the program would remain voluntary, the governors of Illinois, New York and Massachusetts have announced their states' intention to withdraw.

ICE replied that the states had no such authority. But the agency left the effect of the agreements, and Secure Communities' status in states without agreements, uncertain until Friday, when it rescinded the states' role and said the federal government would implement the program unilaterally.

The statement drew an angry response from Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, author of a bill that seeks to repeal Secure Communities in counties that oppose it.

"ICE's outrageous announcement is an affront to both public safety and the most basic principles of democratic governance," said Ammiano, who asked why the agency had taken the time and trouble to sign contracts with states if it never needed their approval in the first place.

Ammiano's AB1081, already passed by the Assembly, would attempt to rewrite California's agreement with ICE so as to enforce the fingerprint program only in counties that chose to participate, and would exempt juveniles and domestic violence victims. Ammiano said the new federal policy would thwart his bill, although some of it might be salvaged with amendments.

The California immigrant rights groups said ICE may be exceeding its authority. They said agency records quote a top ICE official as saying a year ago that states have control over their own fingerprint records and can decide whether to approve their use for Secure Communities.

"We believe states and counties have some say over what happens to this information," said Angela Chan, an Asian Law Caucus attorney in San Francisco.

San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey will continue to enforce his own policy of refusing to turn inmates over to immigration authorities if they have been arrested for low-level, nonviolent misdemeanors and have no serious criminal record, said spokeswoman Eileen Hirst. Since the policy took effect June 1, she said four inmates have been released from jail while 132 have been turned over to ICE.